Years ago, in Whitinsville, the Rev. Alden Besse was asked to participate in a Memorial Day parade. “I thought, what can I carry? Lots of people carry guns and I’ll carry a pruning hook,” he recalled.

When the kerosene lamps were being rewired during the recent Lambert’s Cove Church restoration, a shopping list for a ham and bean supper was found in the walls.

“It was written in the most beautifully blue ink writing from a quill, it was dated to 1895,” Joshua Yates said. “It called for five pounds of salted pork and barrels of beans.”

After nearly two centuries, the Lambert’s Cove Church became but a memory last Sunday.